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Graphic Design

Welcome

Hello!

To get started today, open the Seneca Libraries website

Once at the Libraries website:

  1. Click Subject Guides
  2. Click Graphic Design
  3. Click Course Guides
  4. Click GRA610 W2025

At any time during the class, feel free to "raise a hand", call out my name, or add a question to the chat.

In today's class:

  1. Agenda / Objectives
  2. Steps to Secondary Research
  3. Developing the Question / Topic
    1. Identifying Sources of information
    2. Finding Sources
    3. Evaluating Sources
  4. Citing Sources

By the end of this session, you should be able to: 

Objectives

    1. Find the Graphic Design subject guide
    2. Find the GRA 610 course guide
    3. Describe the basics of research
    4. Identify the steps to secondary research
    5. Brainstorm a topic for searching
    6. Use different search strategies in an online search of Seneca Libraries
    7. Apply evaluation criteria to a source.
Research Is a Process of... Important for Design because...
  • Repeated inquiry
  • Knowledge creation
  • Open-ended exploration
  • Building connections between ideas and information
  • Define, understand, and effectively solve design problems based on evidence
  • Create and make informed design decisions
  • Build your skillset as a designer
    • Critical thinking / problem solving
    • competency with searching databases
    • develop information literacy skills
  1. Primary Research - “any type of research that you collect yourself… [including] surveys, interviews, observations, and ethnographic research” (Purdue University, n.d., para. 1) 
  2. Secondary Research - the synthesis and analysis of existing research on a topic

Choosing your topic and research question

  1. Do some background research to find out more about the topic and learn how others have discussed that topic.
  2. Develop more focused questions to explore your idea more deeply
  3. Further define your topic - avoid being too broad (or you will never be able to cover it all) or too narrow (you may not find enough information)

Some ways to narrow a topic:

  • Place (geography, location, setting, etc.)

  • Population (Age, demographic, etc.)

  • Timeframe (year, decade, etc.)

  • Relevant issue or challenge (eg. difficulty finding work, learning disability, etc.)

Brainstorming

Simple put, brainstorming is a technique used to generate ideas.  This can used to find additional terminology (words, phrases, related topics, etc.), which can improve your searching.  

Encyclopedias

Strengths: short, contains background information on a topic, normally a great starting point when you are just learning about a topic.
Weaknesses: too short, print encyclopedias are out of date quickly, Wikipedia has reliability issues

Books and Book Chapters

Strengths: Provides an in-depth investigation into a topic
Weaknesses: too long, sometimes hard to tell whether it is scholarly

Scholarly Journal Articles

Strengths: Often based on research findings or extensive review, written by experts, reviewed by experts, provides evidence.
Weaknesses: Sometimes written using discipline-specific language or terminology, hard to understand,

Media Sources (news, online magazine articles)

Strengths: Good for current information.
Weaknesses: Sometimes biased, sometimes written to entertain, often not written by experts, often not reviewed by experts

Websites & Social Media

Strengths: Highly accessible, includes government information, "grey literature, etc.
Weaknesses: It is hard to assess credibility and reliability...anyone can post online or create a website.

Lectures, Ted Talks, Interviews, Recordings, Testimony

Strengths: Primary, first-hand accounts.
Weaknesses: It is hard to assess credibility and reliability...single perspective relying on the accuracy of memory.

Search Tools

Search Strategies

Less is More

Start with one or two words and then add one additional term at a time
  • student
  • university student

Phrase Search

Use "quotation marks" around key ideas made up of multiple words
  • "international students"
  • very useful when you have a specific phrase containing common words

Refine

Use features in the search tool, often called limiters or filters, to narrow search results by predefined categories or criteria. Common examples include;
  • Date
  • Content / Material type
  • Peer-reviewed

Sample Search Topic

  • "international student" cap Ontario

Things to remember when using the Seneca Libraries search tool

  1. Sign in to save searches, items, and to request materials.
  2. Use the filters on the left. Common filters are Availability, Content / Material Type, Date.
  3. When viewing an item record, scroll down to the View Online to access the item.
  4. Some items won't be available. You can request unavailable items using interlibrary loan.

Additional Search Features

  1. Description / Subject Headings
  2. Access Options (physical location, online access)
  3. Tools (Cite-It, Permalink)
  4. Separate search for newspaper articles

TASK:  Enter the following search into the Library Search:    fundraising youth

  1. How many search results did you get?
  2. Thinking back to the options to narrow a topic in Developing a Topic, provide an additional search term 
  3. Limit your search to Peer Reviewed. Find the full-text of one of those articles.

RADAR is a useful too for evaluating the quality, credibility, and relevance of any information source.

Reason

Consider the purpose and audience of the source. Why did the authors write/create it and how do you know that? Who did the authors write/create it for and how do you know that?

Authority

Consider who wrote/created the source. Are the creator(s) experts on the topic and how do you know? Consider who is responsible for the content as owner and creator can be different. Is it a company? A government? A university? An individual? and how do you know?

Date

Consider when the source was published or written. How recently was it written and how do you know that?

Appearance

Consider the information from the source. Does your source provide details about where they got their information - such as references? Where is the information published and how is the information presented?

Relevance

What does it have to do with your topic, question or purpose? Can you clearly explain its importance?

TASK:  

Kids with Cancer Society, 2023 Annual Report.  https://www.kidswithcancer.ca/what-we-do/

Without reading the full report, what assumptions can we make about the quality of this source, using the RADAR approach?

TASK: Using the article from the Evaluation Activity and using APA citation style:

  1. Provide an in-text citation 
  2. Provide an appropriate APA reference

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